Collecting Greene's poetry written between Fault Lines and Distillations &Siphonings, this verse indeed surveys the matters closest to his heart, including both the personal and, increasingly, the social and political. In language spare but never sparse, he opens our heartsalong with his own.

"Greene's poems are flawless." Ron Silliman

"There is a lyric delight in the world that informs all of Greene's poetry, from man's pratfalls to the occasions of moment. There is a human face staring at us fromthese pages - yours, mine - one that has Greene chuckling or rapt, our heads noddingalongside or shaking with the sweet peccadilloes our nature permits" J. W. Bonner

This is a book that might well begin, "Once upon a time...and a place." The time, 1967 and 1968, a period of that cultural upheaval. Yet it was then and there that Jonathan Greene, a young poet and fledgling publisher from New York City by way of California, met Thomas Merton. The result was the tragically brief friendship and literary collaboration that is celebrated in this volume.

Greene's introductory memoir sets the scene, describing the unexpectedly rich intellectual and artistic milieu out in the"hinterland" of Kentucky where he was introduced to Merton through mutual friends. Two brief essays on Merton provide further context for the letters that follow, and demonstrate both the breadth of Merton's literary interests and the depth of Greene's knowledge of his friend's writings. Their letters, all too few, coincided with the limited run of Merton's literary journal, Monks Pond, and his exchange with Greene reveals two deeply erudite and abundantly witty minds at work with the earnest joy of language. The longing of the reader that this collaboration might have lasted many more years is underscored by the poignancy of Greene's elegiac poem that closes the volume.

Praise for On The Banks of Monks Pond"A wonderful gift."- Brother Patrick Hart, General Editor, The Journals of Thomas Merton

"...a delightful, beautifully produced little volume detailing the involvement of the poet and publisher Jonathan Greene with Thomas Merton and his participation with the publication of Monks Pond. It is a book of interest to Merton aficionados, to followers of new movements and trends in poetry, creative writing, and printing, andto many others."- Paul M. Pearson, Merton Center, Bellarmine University

Jonathan Greene once more displays that lapidary grace that readers have admired and critics praised repeatedly over the past five decades. The title invokes those flaws concealed within the solidity of everyday objects, waiting patient years to shatter at an unsuspecting touch, former use abandoned to the fragmentary evidence of how they were made and how they ended. Just so the poems here offer unexpected insights into the various shards of life that engage Greene’s notice: a friend’s father’s shirt, his parent’s bed as a child, walking sticks, his woodstove, the heartbeat of a phonograph needle, a cricket who one-ups him in story-telling. These are poems infused with poignancy and loss, guilt and anguish, irony and the occasional caustic commentary, but also love and delight in life, and always great good wit and deep humanity.Praise for Fault Lines"The most important poems any of us ever encounter are those that show fresh ways of looking at the world. This book is rich with poems like that."- Ted Kooser, former United States Poet Laureate

"Jonathan Greene's poems find the hidden seams and fractures in our experience, in our memory. With exact words and precise cadence he not only locates fault lines that separate, but the bonds that bring us together. Fault Lines shows both the scale and range of Greene's achievements."- Robert Morgan

Jonathan Greeneis the author of 30 books and more than 250 poems thathave appeared in over 80 magazines and anthologies in a career spanning six decades. He was born in New York City in 1943, and lived in San Francisco twice in the 1960s. He graduated from Bard College in 1965, where he studied American Literature with Ralph Ellison. He has also studied poetry with Robert Lowell and folklore with Alan Dundes.

For many years beginning in 1965, Greene edited and published more than 50 books under the Gnomon Press imprint, including works by Robert Duncan, Wendell Berry, Jonathan Williams, James Still, and others. He now does free-lance book design and has won a number of awards in the field.

Greene moved to Kentucky in 1966, where he lives on a farm outside of Frankfort with his wife, Dobree Adams, a noted weaver and photographer.

"Greene's book is testimony to a mind ripened by a lifetime of reading - but it's also a fascinating (and sometimes startling) symposium open to all."- Robert WestThe first volume of Greene's commonplace book series offers a distillation of great passages, both profound and amusing, drawn from authors around the world and across the centuries. It's like having an entire library in yourpocket.

This collection of Greene's poetry was his 30th title in a writing career spanning five decades!

"Jonathan is at the peak of his art in Distillations and Siphonings. His poems have never been more alert, more spare, more startling in unexpected connections and quirkyobservations. In many poems he is witness to the infinitesimal, the most fleeting event or thought. Often poems turn on subtle or sly wit. While we can read them separately as epigrams, they accumulate like carefully wrought marginalia on the book of life, troubled by thewoes and cruelties of our time, warmed by affection and cherished friendships. The poems delight us as the meditations of an examined life, patient, wise, gifted,artful."—Robert Morgan (from the Foreword)

As Robert Richardson Jr. said of Thoreau, quoting what Augustine is reported to have remarked of Varro (oneof the many delightful discoveries awaiting in this volume), we can truly say of Jonathan Greene “that he read so much that it was a marvel he ever had time to write anything, and wrote so much that it was difficultto see how he found time to read” – except with Greene we must add his prolific output as a designer and publisher of books as well! We can all be grateful once more for Greene’s broad and perceptive reading, forthis companion volume to his Gists, Orts, Shards: A Commonplace Book offers another installment ofessential thought and marvelous wit distilled from the world’s literature, joined here with excepts fromGreene’s own literary notebooks. Readers of theoriginal volume know the treat they have in store, while those discovering Greene’s gift for “reading with a pen” for the first time are apt to find that they see literature, and life, in a new way after this introduction.

In celebration of the poet turning 70, this volume gathers verse from the precedingten years of his writing and includes poems never before published or previously appearing only in very limited editions.

"What only the best art can give us, our very existence altered, enriched." Ron Rash

"Jonathan Greene is the real thing." Julia Alvarez

"These finely distilled poems show us the way without getting in the way - worth holding on to for along, long, time."John Brandi

A poem from Seeking Light was featured in emeritus US Poet Laureate Ted Kooser's syndicated feature "American Life in Poetry." Click here to read Column 489 with Greene's poem "One Lightto Another."

At one point in Anecdotage author Jonathan Greene confesses “I am always attracted to reading about thelives of eccentrics and interesting characters.” That is a perfect enticement to the charm of reading this book, in which Greene himself is the most interesting among the host of characters who appear in the “memories andstories of a lifetime” he has assembled here. The epiphanies in the subtitle refer to the curious coincidences – one might say synchronicities – that form the often unexpected connective tissue in our relationships, the not-so-many “degrees of separation” that weave us into communities, visible and invisible. Readers who know Greene as a poet will delight in learning about his background and education (formal and other-wise), along with accounts from his wide acquaintance with other authors and artists; while those who have enjoyed his commonplace books will recognize his eye for the wry or obscure exquisite detail applied here to life rather than literature.Praise for Anecdotage"In this utterly unique and charming memoir...the hidden corners of life are revealed in brief stories, glimpses and recollections written in seemingly casual prose. But don’t confuse accessibility for a dearth of art. There is deep kindness and much wisdom in these tales rife withuncanny coincidences and connections, as if we are all a part of Jonathan’s world, and he is a part of ours." Fred Waitzkin

SuccinctThe Broadstone Anthologyof Short Poems

Edited byJonathan Greene& Robert West

Publication Date: October 22, 2013Paperback, 192 pagesISBN: 978-1-937968-08-3$20.00Click on the image of the book cover for more information about this title.

Jonathan Greene is the authoror editor of the many books featured on this page. He is also an award-winning book designer who has designed many Broadstone Books titles over the years, and as a publisher himself for over 40 years he has been an invaluable mentor to us and a major creative contributor to all that we do.

We are proud to present his works here.

Broadstone Books congratulates Jonathan Greene on the release of composer Paul Lansky's new album Contemplating Weather, the title piece of which uses several of Jonathan's poems as the text for this contemporary chorale work. Click here to visitBridge Records to learn more about or to purchase the album.

. . . no one questions how a ladder can rest against a cloud.

There are moments when the poetry of Jonathan Greene can seem as airy and insubstantial asthe cover of his latest collection. Though each exquisitely well-chosen word bears the full weight of human experience, his touch is so light and surethat his poems float on the page, and in our minds upon reading them. This seeming simplicity betrays a mastery of poeticcraft by an author who has been at this for six decades now. And if his verses more often touch on mortality and loss, his humor is intact, as in this characteristically short scene “Inthe Pumpkin Patch”:

The toddler used togetting his way, picks outa pumpkin he can't lift.

Fortunately Greene is back to lend a hand, with poetry to make life no less serious, but a bit easier to bear.

For 500 years teachers and scholars have commended the practice of recording “commonplaces” – that is, striking and noteworthy phrases encountered while reading – for later reference. Few in recent times have taken this advice with such good effect as Jonathan Greene. A poet, publisher, book designer, and translator, Greene is foremost a reader of vast range and expansive curiosity, and the fruits of over fifty years of reading with pen in hand are collected here for the delight and enlightenment of his fellow readers. Ancient Chinese sages mingle with modern jazz masters, Yogi Berra meets Einstein, and the wisdom (and wit) of great minds known and unknown is on parade. In the end, this collection of such seemingly disparate thinkers and themes coalesces into an original work in its own right, an intellectualand artistic portrait of Greene himself, offering new and deeper insights into the mind and heart behind his many volumes of poetry. This enlarged and revised edition collects his previous two volumes in this series (available below), with much new material.

Full Circle

Dobree Adams &Jonathan Greene

ISBN 978-0-9802117-4-0Paperback, 40 Pages$34.95 retail price

Click on the image of the book cover for more information about this title.